How to Read a Diary: Critical Contexts and Interpretive Strategies for 21st-Century Readers

Abstract

Appearing exactly ten years after Philip Lejeune’s On Diary (2009), Desirée Henderson’s How to Read a Diary: Critical Contexts and Interpretive Strategies for 21st-Century Readers is a timely book that elucidates critical approaches to interpreting diaries and attends to the questions of genre conventions and genre crossings, the historical statistics that lie about parity. But the fact is that I have still encountered discrimination and chauvinists, still struggle for crumbs, and still strategically try to dress like the French in order to navigate academia. Miller’s book is a quiet revolution that creates a new space for women’s friendships. She reminds us to cherish the friendships we have because what if, in the end, the erstwhile marginalia, and that marginal space relegated to women in academia and at large, is actually the central nerve of all creative intellectual life? Miller recognizes the transformative power and centrality of the nitty-gritty in women’s outer and inner lives, and the vital, enduring friendships they form.